On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:30 PM Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 25 Aug 2019, at 07:43, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:14 PM Russell Standish <[email protected]> > wrote: > > This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must >> exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that >> something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to >> do this. > > > I am with John here. Talk of a "disembodied" mind (or calculation). is > just so much hot air. I ask for evidence of such things, and none has been > provided to date. "Minds" (or calculations) are the consequence of physical > operations. > > > That is revisionism. The notion of computation has been discovered by > mathematicians working on the foundation of mathematics, as a way to avoid > some paradoxes. You confuse “physical implementation of a computation” with > “computation”. > You confuse the formal definition of a "computation" with the physical object that performs the operations necessary to do the calculation. > That is like confusing a function and a set representation a function. It > is a common error. But when doing metaphysics, that error becomes important > to avoid. A mathematical object is different from all its representations > through any other mathematical objects. > "A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction." as Brent says. It may be isomorphic to other mathematical objects, but that does not give it independent existence. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRYb5VfZKrnq5erFS789jEbWUCVRt5O%2B_skx-VV2csNAQ%40mail.gmail.com.
